Authorities in Mexico have voiced fears the Jalisco Cartel has arrived in Baja California state, the most substantial indication yet the powerful criminal organization is expanding northward, potentially setting the stage for a deadly turf war between rival cartels.

Bolivia's capture of two Peruvians who allegedly worked for the Tijuana Cartel highlights Bolivia's central role in the region's cocaine "air bridge," and raises the possibility that the once-mighty Mexican crime group still has some international reach.

Mexico's Tijuana Cartel is reportedly marshaling its forces in an attempt to gain back some of its lost glory, according to one security official, providing a look at the current state of a once powerful criminal empire that has since fallen into decline.

Tijuana Cartel Profile

The Tijuana Cartel, also known as the Arellano Felix Organization, is based in one of the most strategically important Mexico border cities for trafficking drugs into the United States. Due to infighting, arrests and the deaths of many top leaders, the organization is a shell of what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, when it was considered one of Mexico's most potent and violent criminal groups. Still the cartel continues to export narcotics and may be expanding its presence internationally.

Authorities in Mexico have voiced fears the Jalisco Cartel has arrived in Baja California state, the most substantial indication yet the powerful criminal organization is expanding northward, potentially setting the stage for a deadly turf war between rival cartels.

Bolivia's capture of two Peruvians who allegedly worked for the Tijuana Cartel highlights Bolivia's central role in the region's cocaine "air bridge," and raises the possibility that the once-mighty Mexican crime group still has some international reach.

Mexico's Tijuana Cartel is reportedly marshaling its forces in an attempt to gain back some of its lost glory, according to one security official, providing a look at the current state of a once powerful criminal empire that has since fallen into decline.

Peru's National Police have arrested a man identified as one of the country's most wanted criminals and the leader of an international drug trafficking organization with ties to the Tijuana Cartel, highlighting the continued transnational operations of the weakened Mexican group.

The capture of Tijuana Cartel leader Fernando Sanchez Arellano has left his mother in charge of the Mexican drug trafficking group, a change that could herald a shift towards semi-legal business operations and less violence.

Authorities in Mexico have captured the leader of the debilitated Tijuana Cartel, removing what will likely prove the last of Arellano Felix clan with the ability to control a large portion of the Tijuana drug corridor, but not the networks that move the drugs.

A gunman disguised as a clown has killed the oldest brother in the clan running Mexico's once-mighty Tijuana Cartel, raising the question: why would someone target one of the last remaining members of a dying cartel?

A new report examines the factors behind Tijuana's relative lack of violence compared to other northern Mexico cities, and raises questions about whether the recent peace experienced in the city is sustainable.

It is tempting to separate Mexico's drug cartels into six hierarchical groups, each competing for trafficking turf. The reality, however, is that the Sinaloa Federation, the Gulf Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, the Zetas and La Familia, not to mention several new offshoot organizations, are fluid, dynamic, for-profit syndicates that sometimes operate under the umbrella of what are effectively conglomerates but more often than not operate as independent, smaller-scale franchises.

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Investigations

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InSight Crime is a foundation

dedicated to the study of the principal threat to national and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean: organized crime. We seek to deepen and inform the debate about organized crime in the Americas by providing the general public with regular reporting, analysis and investigation on the subject and on state efforts to combat it.